‘Hello, may I please speak to O.J. Mayo?’

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For someone who insisted on calling me ‘Mr. Bolch,’ O.J. Mayo wasn’t showing me a lot of respect.

Twice after he departed USC, the one-and-done shooting guard gave me bogus cellphone numbers. OK, so maybe ‘bogus’ is a bit strong. They might have belonged to members of his entourage, but they certainly didn’t appear to be his.

I thought we had a good working relationship. He always greeted me with a smile and called me by my last name -- even when I asked him not to -- throughout the one season I covered him as a Trojan. Even when I wrote that he didn’t make the impact he had hoped in his college career, his demeanor never changed.

So when he gave me his cell number without a moment’s hesitation following an interview in May, I figured it was legit. Especially since the number had a West Virginia area code. Mayo even cut off a member of his entourage who had attempted to give me a different number.

A few weeks later I needed to reach Mayo to follow up on the NCAA investigation into whether he had accepted improper benefits from an agent’s runner. Boy, was I in for a surprise when I dialed the number.

‘Is this O.J.?’ I asked when a man answered.

‘No,’ came the response.

Undeterred, I figured maybe I had reached a friend of Mayo’s who might be able to help.

‘Could you give O.J. a message for me?’ I said.

There was silence. The line was dead. So much for that.

After Mayo was drafted in the first round in June and traded to Memphis, I spoke with him again during an interview arranged by the Grizzlies’ media relations staff. My last question was about the cell number and why it didn’t work.

Mayo said he had to change the number when he left Los Angeles. Curious, I later thought, since it was a West Virginia area code. But Mayo offered up another number, and this time I figured it had to be good. And maybe it was.

But when I repeatedly called it later in the summer, I never got Mayo, never heard his voice on the message prompt and never got a callback.

I’m going to ask Mayo about it again tonight before the Grizzlies play the Clippers at Staples Center. What are the odds the third time’s the charm?

-- Ben Bolch